sonatype/sisu — comment on commit 42fc337e7def2bb7717d4331639bc6f49ded93ba
File: sisu-inject/containers/guice-bean/guice-bean-reflect/src/main/java/org/sonatype/guice/bean/reflect/Logs.java line 129
By mcculls:

Unfortunately there are third-party libraries which define sub-classes of Throwable that are not severe errors and should be treated in the same way as exceptions. Checking for anything other than Exception or LinkageError here would allow these non-severe Throwables to propagate, which would not be correct as they are recoverable. Similarly there are sub-classes of Error which can be handled safely and may be thrown from third-party code, like simple assertion failures.

The Throwables listed here are a whitelist of known severe conditions that should definitely not be handled, this is easier to manage than the converse.